Not long after I graduated college, I spent 8 months as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Republic of Palau at the western-most edge of the region known as Micronesia (not to be confused with the Federated Sates of Micronesia [FSM], a country spanning much of that region). One of my first experiences in Palau was attending a funeral of a Palauan who had been killed in Iraq. I remember thinking then how bizarre it was to have more contact with a soldier's family and community so directly affected by his heroism and death over 9,000 miles away from home.
His was not the only Iraq-related death I heard about during my short stay.
I met more young men and women in Palau planning to join the U.S. military than I have ever met in Virginia, and they all sited similar reasons for signing-up: the monetary compensation to support their family and a chance to live in the States and perhaps gain citizenship.
Recently, my friend Nathan fleshed-out similar observations for the Pacific Magazine through his experiences as a volunteer in Kosrae (an island state of the FSM) and by shadowing several Micronesians at Fort Carson, an army base just south of Colorado Springs, Colorado. He explains a hunch I had had, but never really knew for certain: "the highest fatality rates in the Iraq War are from soldiers who trace their ancestry to Pacific Islands. American Samoa leads the list with 12 fatalities per 100,000 residents, following closely Guam and Micronesia respectively, three and two deaths per 100,000 residents." Not to say anything of the service and sacrifice of American soldiers (yes: there have been more combined American deaths than those of our allies or contractors), but there is something grossly perverse about other nations sacrificing twice as many of their citizens per capita towards a war effort that is not their own.
A thank-you to Nathan for the piece. More of his pictures from Fort Carson here and here.
Leave a comment